BUSBOY NAILED AFTER STICKUP IS OUT ON $2,000 BAIL AND ELIGIBLE FOR JOBLESS PAY

An official-looking piece of mail arrived at Erik's Deli in a Chicago suburb the other day. Matt Mueller, the manager, opened the envelope and found some forms that the state of Illinois wanted him to fill out.

They concerned a young man named Anthony, who used to be a busboy at the deli. Anthony was out of work and wanted the state to give him unemployment compensation.

Mueller sat down and remembered what he knew about Anthony. In the beginning, Anthony had been a reasonably competent busboy. He filled the water glasses, cleaned off the tables and washed his hands when he went to the bathroom.

But after a few weeks, he seemed to lose his enthusiasm and energy. He'd show up late for work, leave tables half cleared, and his mind seemed to be somewhere else.

Mueller would tell him, "Anthony, you have to work harder." Anthony would shrug and say he was doing his best.

After about three or four such conversations, Mueller told Anthony that he was through. Anthony shrugged. Being fired didn't seem to bother him.

A few weeks later, something strange happened at the deli. One of the night-shift employees was taking out a can of garbage. When he opened the door, he met three men wearing masks and surgical gloves. One had a gun.

They grabbed the employee and dragged him inside. They quickly rounded up the other employees, and one of the masked men pointed at the night manager and said, "That's him."

The night manager was dragged into the restaurant office and told to open the safe. When he pretended that he couldn't, they whacked him on the head and threatened to shoot him. He instantly remembered how to open the safe and they left with $7,000.

Naturally, the police suspected that this was an inside job, since one of the robbers knew who the night manager was, where the safe was, and that it could be opened and would contain a considerable sum.

They began wondering: Could it have been someone like, say, Anthony, the ex-busboy? The problem was that because the men wore masks, there was no way to prove it had been Anthony, even if they could find him.

While they wondered what to do, they got lucky. A tipster told them the same guys who robbed the deli were going to knock off another suburban restaurant.

So several cops posed as customers and kitchen workers and waited. Sure enough, when an employee took out some garbage, there were the men in masks and surgical gloves. They barged in but were rudely surprised to find a bunch of cops there to greet them.

One of them bolted out the door and sprinted away. The cops chased him and they wrestled around a bit, and a gun went off.

"Oww," the masked man said, since the bullet punctured his leg.

When they removed his mask, they found that their hunch had been right. It was Anthony, the ex-busboy.

The cops assumed that Anthony either took the busboy job in the first place just to case the restaurant, or later decided that robbing the place paid better than filling water glasses.

In either case, he and his pals were charged with both robberies and are awaiting trial. Since they were caught on the spot, it is assumed that even a Chicago judge will find them guilty of at least one of the robberies.

Anyway, that is what went through the mind of Mueller, the deli manager, when Anthony's unemployment compensation papers came from the state.

And he said: "Hey, wait a minute. The reason he's unemployed is that he is a stick-up man."

So he called the state office and told them that he didn't think it was necessary to give money to someone who hits people on the head and points guns at them. He was told that this did not disqualify Anthony from receiving jobless payments.

"They are eligible," a state employee said, "unless they are convicted of public aid fraud, not for just some crime. We don't deny someone just because they have a criminal record."

Mueller took the forms and dropped them in a can with half-eaten corned beef sandwiches.

When we mentioned this to a state welfare person, she said: "I don't understand why he wouldn't want to fill them out. We're just trying to verify information."

Incidentally, the reason Anthony is not in jail, and is asking the state for walking-around money, is that he was able to post bond on the robbery charges. He plunked down $2,000 in cash.